I have tried logging into the other DE's (Unity and XFCE) all with the same result.

I "suspect" it may have something to do with me accidently changing/getting lost in
various different run levels yesterday !

I was trying to get to the desktop cube (Ctrl+F11) and I have inadvertently managed to
get lost in the different runlevels. I finally manged to get back to a standard GUI,
finish what I was doing and then close down the laptop as normal.

However this morning, it's a no-go.

Am I stuck, (and still logged into) another runlevel ?

If so, can I log out (or flush all current loged in sessions) to start again fresh ?
Would this cure my problem ?

(Edit 01 - I'm typing this from my desktop PC)
(Edit 02 - I managed to capture the on screen text. I posted it into the main body of the text).
(Edit 03 - Added the correct specs for the machine in question).

Last edited by GeordieJedi on Sun Sep 01, 2013 5:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

First thing I would try would be logging into a virtual console. When you get to the GUI login screen, press CTRL-ALT-F2. That should give you a full screen virtual console with a login prompt. Log in there - if there is a problem with your password, you'll know soon enough.

If you can log in, you should be able to get some clues as to what is happening by checking dmesg and /var/log/syslog.

The messages you see when your system is trying to log on are just those from the boot processes that get dumped to one of the terminals. Your problem appears to be that no window manager/desktop environment will start.
As mentioned above, try logging into one of the text terminals by doing ctrl+alt+f2 (or any other, you can get back to your log in screen usually at f7, sometimes f8 ).
The only times I can recall having a similar problem has been when one of the files (.local in that case) had managed to get root only rw permissions. So log in at a text terminal and then do ls -al to check the permissions on the files in your home directory. If there are too many to fit on the screen, you can always pipe it through less (or your preferred pager).

It seemed to happen after I pressed the following key combo
Ctrl+Alt+F12

I can get to all the other tty levels and I can get back to the GUI log-in screen,
however it doesn't recognize my password in any of the sessions.
Again, I'm certain that I'm entering the right password,
As I'm not getting an "invalid password" error message.